Republican Pete Peterson and Democratic state Sen. Alex Padilla are the clear favorites for California secretary of state in a new Field Poll, following the disgraced Sen. Leland Yee's withdrawal from the race.

The poll, released Friday, showed Yee clearly had a chance before he was arrested at his San Francisco home on gun-running and bribery charges resulting from an FBI sting. Yee had been running a close third in the race, trailing Padilla by just 2 points.

Padilla, D-Van Nuys, appears to be the chief beneficiary of Yee's withdrawal. When Yee's name was removed from the poll following his March 26 arrest, support for Padilla increased from 10 percent to 17 percent.

"He has opened some space between himself and all other candidates, other than Peterson,'' said Mark DiCamillo, the Field Poll's director.

The survey of 504 likely voters from March 18 to April 5 showed Peterson was the choice of 30 percent of respondents expected to vote in the June 3 open primary, while 17 percent preferred Padilla. Trailing both were Green Party candidate David Curtis with 5 percent; nonpartisan candidate Dan Schnur with 4 percent and Democrat Derek Cressman with 3 percent.

But 41 percent of voters were still undecided.

The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 5.5 percentage points.

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DiCamillo said Peterson is leading because most Republicans are coalescing around his candidacy. The only other Republican in the race is Roy Allmond, a California state employee who has not participated in any of the debates.

But DiCamillo noted that Padilla has a great opportunity to consolidate support among Democratic voters, who greatly outnumber Republicans in the state. And Padilla also will probably come out ahead with independent voters, DiCamillo said, because in California they identify with Democrats more than with Republicans.

As of March 17, Padilla led all candidates in fund-raising with $614,426 cash on hand, and $73,900 debt.

Meanwhile, Peterson, the executive director of Pepperdine University's Davenport Institute for Public Engagement and Civic Leadership, had a paltry $1,638 cash on hand and $84,913 debt.

But Peterson spokesman Brandon Gesicki said Peterson's lead shows that voters are "paying attention to the race because of what happened with the one of the candidates.''

Slightly less than half of the poll was conducted before Californians learned of Yee's arrest. Before that development, the poll showed Yee had a 24 percent favorable rating and a 20 percent unfavorable rating. Fifty-six percent of voters had no opinion.

After he was hauled away in handcuffs, Yee's favorable rating plummeted to 15 percent, while his unfavorable rating jumped to 34 percent. Surprisingly, though, 51 percent of voters still had no opinion of the politician who generated international headlines.

"What does it take to outrage voters?'' asked Hoover Institution fellow Bill Whalen, a conservative political analyst. "I know he hasn't had his day in court, but if that can't spark outrage, what does it say about California voters?''

Still, the scandal appears to have shifted some voters' opinions of the state Legislature. This week, results from another Field Poll showed that for the first time since 2001, the number of Californians who approve of the Legislature finally exceeded those who did not -- with 46 percent approving and 40 percent disapproving. But after Yee's arrest, the numbers flipped to 43 and 46, respectively.

Padilla campaign consultant Rose Kapolczynski on Thursday noted that Padilla's uptick after Yee's withdrawal means that "clearly voters don't see this race as a referendum on the Legislature.'' Instead, she said, voters "are looking at these candidates as individuals and are not painting the entire Legislature with a broad brush.''

DiCamillo and others were surprised at Schnur's low numbers. The former GOP strategist and Fair Political Practices Commission chairman, who is currently on leave as director of the University of Southern California's Unruh Institute of Politics, is well-known around the state by political insiders. He has made political campaign reform his main issue.

But DiCamillo believes the ballot designation of No Party Preference may have hurt Schnur's chances in the eyes of many voters.

"This is kind of the first time we've seen somebody choose that designation in running for office, and there was a lot of speculation as to what it would mean,'' DiCamillo said. "It does not seem to help.''

He said when voters don't much know about candidates, they want cues to understand who that person is. One of those cues on a ballot following a candidate's name is their political party, he said.

Schnur campaign spokesman Rob Stutzman, however, said: "We're not surprised we're in single digits. The path in June for an independent is trickier, but it gives Dan a distinct advantage in November. Once voters are aware there is a reform candidate, they want to vote for them.''

In California's new primary system, the two top candidates in June, regardless of party affiliation, will advance to the fall election